Monday 18 June 2012

The Nature Reserve. Please don't make me pond dip again ...

I went on a school trip to a nature reserve today.It was a lovely place, at least it would have been if I wasn't surrounded by 60 children, a large proportion of whose vomit I'd had to clear up on the coach there. Still ... it was quiet, generally, and busy with birds and bugs, flitting about in the intermittent sunshine.

First we indulged in some pond dipping. I have never pond dipped before and, to be honest, I won't be doing it again unless either paid or forced to. I think it probably took about 7 minutes for me to go from "Gosh ... this is quite interesting" to " Mmmm ... had enough of this now. I'm so not interested in bugs and pond weed." Of course, being with children on their annual school trip meant that I had to feign a certain level of enthusiasm, but this came close to finishing me off.

The lady running the whole pond dipping thing was very nice and full of enthusiasm for her subject. But after an hour and a half even the most interested of our group was glazing over and losing the will to live. I was beginning to consider throwing a child into the pond for the sole reason of being able to rescue them and then heading off to the visitor's centre with them in search of dry clothes and sanity ...

After a life saving lunch we all headed off to spot birds, armed with binoculars and clip boards. Us that is. Not the birds. To be honest I rather enjoyed this part of the day. I could quite imagine sitting in a hide with a flask of Pimms and a pair of binoculars, maybe a good book and a salami roll ... Of course sitting in a hide with 15 7 year olds and a couple of dedicated twitchers wasn't quite the same relaxing experience. It was lovely though to see some of the children's interest being kindled. Maybe I'm not always such a cynic ...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh Sarah, my heart goes out to you....I always try to avoid these school trips like the plague! Luckily there is usual some other poor unsuspecting mothers who are keen to get involved so I step aside and leave them to it! It sounds as though you were duped (or blackmailed by your children) into this one?!

Crack You Whip said...

I thought my visit to the donut shop with 20 kids was bad...this one has my donut adventure beat.